Chris Vicino has internal fortitude and integrity. When you have these traits, you do the right thing. When you do the right thing, people don’t like it and they make crazy allegations to discredit you.

Chandler would be wise to grab this guy.

~ CRAIG LAWRENCE, VIA EMAIL

Time for a change

In Los Angeles County, public buildings, waste management, water resources, transportation, land development and emergency management all line up under the umbrella of the Los Angeles County Public Works (LACDPW). Gail Farber is the managing director of Public Works and serves as county road commissioner, county engineer, and chief engineer of the Los Angeles County Flood Control District. She used to work for CALTRANS. Farber’s leadership role began Dec. 1, 2008. Her bio can be found here: http://dpw.lacounty.gov/landing/team.cfm.

Farber and the others listed on their Web site as the current leaders of the approximately 4,000 employees at LACDPW have become very interesting to me, of late. I could spend hours investigating her past oversight of projects and I’m sure I would find many that are appalling to me. Yet, that would only render part of what must be a multinuanced story.

People and leaders are neither good nor bad, it all depends on the context in which they make their decisions, and that would include reliance upon other experts, too, since no one can know everything about everything. However, when you are the leader of any organization it becomes your responsibility and your ass if you order acts based on substandard information.

That is why I must hold Gail Farber responsible for the destruction of the Arcadia Woodlands. As you may know, the LACDPW destroyed an ancient oak grove, chaparral, mature sycamores and prime habitat to make a space to dump the sediment collected from the nearby dam. After doing this, the LACDPW claimed a miscalculation in the amount of sediment they needed to dump. So, thinking of only making the best of things, they decided to create a permanent mitigation site now dubbed Arcadia Wastelands.

They have not been sued. Apparently they are surprised by this. If they were a private agency being sued, it would mean something, possibly the end of their existence. Since we are dealing with a public agency then, gee, as a taxpaying citizen, I really, really don’t want to sue them. It will cost me money no matter which side wins.

So you see our dilemma. What to do? The leadership of LACDPW must be held accountable and changed. It’s the only solution to a problem with LACDPW that keeps on compounding mistake after mistake.

The next big mistake on the horizon is Hahamongna Watershed Park. How am I to participate thoughtfully in the environmental impact report process if all that is before me is flawed? It’s as if Gail Farber is leading the entire agency into a drainage ditch. Why?

I can only conclude that the LACDPW is woefully misled and relies on substandard engineering. This is a disaster for our government. The government is us!

~ DIANNE PATRIZZI, PASADENA

Dissolving democracy

In 1954, the CIA overthrew the elected government of Iran and its then-prime minister Mossadeq in a dispute in which Iran wanted to increase its share of oil revenue from 10 percent to 30 percent. The techniques used consisted of false stories planted in the local newspapers, hiring thugs to break up legitimate public demonstrations, staging fake public demonstrations, and bribing and co-opting politicians to oppose the government.

On Jan. 20, 2009, while the Democrats were celebrating Barack Obama’s election at inaugural balls, Republican leaders and their money-bag supporters met at the DC restaurant The Caucus Room. The plan was to make Obama a one-term president by blocking every initiative, funding ersatz grassroots organizations to publicly demonstrate and attempting at every level to keep the George W. Bush crashed-economy from recovering.

In 2012, after the election of Obama, the corrupt attorney general under Ronald Reagan, Ed Meese, who whitewashed the White House in the Iran-contra criminal acts, met with several wealthy donors and other corrupt operatives. They decided to shut down the government if necessary in order to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The Koch brothers, an associated Freedom Foundation and the US Chamber of Commerce put up $200 million to fund this. They organized the tea party activists to stage phony protests, called Republican congressmen, planted stories on their right-wing Web sites as well as their paid house organ, FOX News, and are currently arguing before the US Supreme Court for the right to give unlimited amounts of money to any politician. In short, the Supreme Court is being asked to sanction bribery; expect a 5-4 OK for bribery. Ted Cruz was the useful idiot enlisted to further the objectives of these oligarchs in their pursuit of overthrowing the legitimately elected government and the Constitution upon which it is based.

These oligarchs are using the techniques pioneered by the CIA and used to overthrow several governments, including Iran and Guatemala. They do not believe in the democratic process. Under our system of legitimacy, if you want to change a law, win a majority in the House and Senate to effect the change, and have a president sign that change. The present process is nothing more than a direct assault on our democracy.

~ NORMAN RODEWALD, VIA EMAIL

Proud vegan

I have been vegan for 10 years now and feel amazing.

Animals are beautiful and no different than we are. They want love, families, freedom, sunshine and no one to harm or kill them.

There is absolutely no need whatsoever to eat animals when there is such an abundance of food to choose from. The best way to see for yourself is to try it out, at least for a year.